1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to systems, methods, and software products for online banking, and more particularly, to systems, methods, and software products for online banking that integrates end user checkbook activities directly with bank statement transactions.
2. Background of Invention
Online banking systems have been repeatedly promised, but rarely delivered in recent years. A lengthy summary of some of the problems the banking industry has faced in delivering online banking is found in Lawlor et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,501.
One of the key issues in delivering online banking is ease of use. Ease of use is predicated on many factors, including the ability of the user to identify the banking information of interest and execute desired banking tasks without error or difficulty. Generally, users perform four main tasks in checkbook and online banking applications:
Account Management--This activity includes viewing bank account data from the bank, such as cleared transactions and account balances, initiating requests to bank to generate fund transfers between accounts, and supporting tasks such as requesting information from the bank on certain accounts or transactions.
Bill payment--Initiating requests to the bank to pay a vendor a certain amount by a certain date. Related tasks such as making payment inquiries may also be performed.
Checkbook transactions--Accounting for checks, withdrawals, debit card purchases, and the like, that the user does on a regular basis. These transactions must be accounted for and integrated with the account data from the bank for an accurate reflection of the user's account.
Current balance calculation--Determining how much money the user really has available in their account, based on cleared and uncleared transactions (including other checkbook transactions). The current balance is calculated, typically by the user or sometimes by the application, by taking the latest account balance given by the bank and adding/subtracting any uncleared transactions in the user's own checkbook.
Extensive consumer and usability research indicates two key areas of usability concerns with these various tasks. First, customers view banking, bill payment and the determination of their current balance as interrelated tasks. Accordingly, they want related banking task and banking information to operate together in an online banking product. In fact banking tasks, such as obtaining balance information, cleared transactions, and so forth, are often used to provide information to support the bill payment tasks.
Second, customers have difficulty using an online banking system when it is necessary to navigate from one user interface to another user interface in order to complete some task. Navigation difficulties increase both the time required by the user to complete the task, and the likelihood of error in completing the task.
An example of a typical user task makes clear the need for integration of banking tasks and banking information. A typical scenario is payment of bills, which may include a large credit card bill. The user will typically decide how much of the credit card bill to pay based on currently available funds, taking into account cleared transactions, and uncleared transactions, such as other bills being paid. To complete this task with an online banking software product, the user needs to perform the following steps:
Determine current balance in the account based for cleared transactions. PA1 Review in the checkbook to determine actual current balance, based on the uncleared transactions, and cleared balance. PA1 Determine if they need to transfer money from another account to pay the bills. PA1 Enter the bill payment requests including, calculating how much of the credit card to pay from the actual balance. PA1 Use the requests to pay the bills. PA1 Send the request to transfer funds.
From the user's perspective, this banking activity is clearly an integrated one, since the user must integrate three tasks--writing checks to pay other bills, obtaining cleared transactions and current balance from the bank, and determining a combined current balance based on this information--before writing the credit card bill. Accordingly, there is a need to provide an online banking software product and system that supports the integration of these tasks and their underlying information components.
There have been various approaches, as summarized in Lawlor et al., to making online banking easy for consumers to use for bill payment and checkbook maintenance. These approaches fall mainly into two categories, typically tightly associated with the type of company that is delivering the online banking software and system. Generally, there are personal finance products from personal finance software companies, and banking products from banks and other financial institutions. Products in both of these categories are generally deficient at integrating banking tasks and banking information in support of user's actual needs.
First, online banking software products from personal finance software companies are typically "checkbook-centric." Most personal finance software products employ the checkbook as the underlying user model. As a result, all transactions, such as paying bills, writing checking, depositing or transferring funds, are done through a checkbook-like user interface, even if the checkbook metaphor is not particularly appropriate for the task. For example, Quicken.RTM. 5.0, provides a checkbook metaphor for users. In FIG. 1, there is shown a user interface 100 of the main entry screen for a personal finance software product. The entry screen has a number of icons that are invoked to perform different functions, such as the checkbook register 101, online banking 103, and online bill payment 105. FIG. 2 illustrates the user interface for the checkbook register 107.
Prior to the availability of online banking, the user would enter all of their various transactions into the checkbook register 107, and then manually reconcile the checkbook register 107 against a printed bank statement. In the checkbook register type user interface the user sees all of their transactions, including both cleared and uncleared transactions mixed together. This is seen in FIG. 2, where the first transaction is indicated as cleared (the "R" in the column labeled "Clr"), and the other transactions are not cleared. Further, the balance 109 here is of all transactions that have been entered by the user, whether cleared or not. The user has no separate balance information for just the cleared transactions immediately available, which as noted above, was the first item of information the user typically needs during bill payment.
Once online banking became available, this type functionality was added as an additional feature in many checkbook products, to both automate reconciliation of uncleared transactions in the checkbook against the bank's own records of cleared transactions, and to provide electronic, online payment of bills. Typically, an online banking module is provided in which the user can view the bank's current account balance in a user interface display separate from the checkbook register 107. As shown in FIG. 1, there are separate icons for checkbook register 101 and the online banking module 103. Selecting the online banking icon for the online banking module 103 causes the display of the online banking user interface 111, as shown in FIG. 3. In this interface, the user only sees the cleared transactions which have been downloaded from the bank with the Get Online Data button 113. The balance 115 here is based only on the cleared transactions, the bank having no information about the user's recently entered, and uncleared, checkbook transactions.
To use the online information for bill payment, the user must download certain transactions to first reconcile their account. Once the transactions are downloaded, the checkbook register 107 merely reflects which transactions have cleared. The only difference that appears to the user is the indication in the checkbook register 107 of which transactions have been cleared. This is shown in FIG. 2 as the letter "R" in the "Clr" column. To use both sets of the data, the user would have to switch back and forth between the different user interfaces.
Electronic bill paying, which is often touted as a desirable feature of online banking systems, is typically enabled, but often as an extension of the user's checkbook. That is, bill payments are treated as checks, and entered in a separate user interface. FIG. 4 illustrates a typical example of an online bill payment interface 117. This interface 117, which is invoked from its own icon 105 in the main user interface 100, is completely separate from the user interfaces for the online banking module 111 or the checkbook 103. This separation of function hinders the integration of bill payment, account management, and checkbook tasks.
For these reasons, in these types of software products, there is no persistent view of the bank's online statement, as such. The online banking module, as illustrated, is essentially a staging area where the user views transactions before using them to reconcile their checkbook or pay bills. In this user model the checkbook is persistent and the online statement is temporary, since it is only viewed by downloading the information from the bank. Further, in checkbook-centric products, the balance that is visible throughout the software product is the ending balance based on the transactions in the user's checkbook, as shown in FIG. 2, including both cleared and uncleared transactions. The latest balance of cleared transactions from the bank is typically visible only within the separate user interface display for the online banking module and is not used anywhere else in the product.
The problem with this approach is that it assumes the primacy of the user's checkbook in the user model and system design, and demotes the fact that the bank's own records of the user's account are a necessary component for an overall accurate reflection of account activity. That is, while the bank's own records show that user's actual balance and cleared transactions, that information is never presented to the user in single user interface consolidated with the existing information in the checkbook. Rather, the information identifying cleared transactions is merely propagated into the user's checkbook, as shown in the "Clr" column in FIG. 2. Further, while bill payment is dependent on both the checkbook and online statement information, that activity and related information is presented in a completely separate user interface.
As a result of this user model and design, there is a lack of integration in the product of the actual tasks the user wants to perform. The software product separates checkbook functions, bill payment, and viewing/downloading transactions from the bank into discrete operations, with their own user interfaces. The user must perform four separate tasks, and navigate multiple user interface screens to achieve what they consider to be the single task of paying bills based on currently available funds.
In the second category of online banking systems are software products and systems provided by banks or their affiliates. Not surprisingly, these software products are "bank-statement centric" and take the bank's statement as the primary user model and interface. These software products typically display only transactions that have actually been cleared by the bank. An example of this type of user interface is shown in FIG. 5, which illustrates a portion of Wells Fargo's Online.TM. Banking web-site. In this account history screen (one of a number of user interfaces to be navigated, including an account summary screen, a fund transfer screen, and a download screen). Along with only showing cleared transactions, there is only provided the balance information for cleared transactions.
Because of this limitation, these products typically do not let the user incorporate transactions that have not been posted or cleared by the bank, for example, checks that the user has recently written, or withdrawals or deposits recently made but not posted, transactions which are a fundamental component of the user's overall account. Thus, the user does not get a complete view of the actual status of his account as the user considers it, but only the information about cleared transactions that the bank has. This information is insufficient to serve the user's needs since the actual amount of funds the user has available is based on both the cleared and uncleared transactions.
Another particular limitation of online banking systems such as Wells Fargo's is that they do not contain information fully identifying the cleared transactions. As shown in FIG. 5, there is no information identifying the payee for checks, debits, and point of sale transactions. This absence of information makes it difficult for the user to determine which transaction is associated with which payee, and thus which transactions have cleared. The user must correlate check numbers instead, which in some cases my be incorrectly recorded or even not recorded at all by the user, who instead may easily remember the payee. Identification of point of sale transactions is even harder, since only the date and amount are available from the financial institution. Thus these types of online systems make integration of the various banking information and tasks very difficult and time consuming.
Further, many of these bank-based software products are specifically intended to show merely the user's current cleared balance and the cleared transactions on which it is based. However, the user cannot typically see the impact of these activities on their accounts until they actually clear the bank. That is, the effect of transactions on the balance of the user's account is not reflected in the user interface of the product. The user also cannot typically enter into the online system other transactions such as hand-written checks or calculate a running balance based on both clear and uncleared transactions. To do these latter activities, the user typically needs to download the cleared transaction data from the online banking product and import it into another personal finance product. An example of this limitation is shown in FIG. 6, which is a view of another user interface screen of the Well Fargo Online.TM. Banking product. Here, the user can download cleared transactions into a specific file format. The user must then use a separate personal finance application or spreadsheet to actually integrate the cleared transaction data with their checkbook of uncleared transactions. This process is time-consuming and difficult for many users, and requires using two different software products, and understanding how to interrelate them.
As the foregoing discussion indicates, users of these various types of online banking products have to navigate between multiple different user interfaces to perform a single task. Usability research on users working with these types of products has shown that at each navigation step, there was high potential for error and confusion. Users are not always sure how information in one user interface screen is related to information in another screen, or when it is necessary to switch to another part of the product to proceed through a task.
The need for easy-to-use and efficient online banking software products and systems becomes even more pronounced when considering that different users have different needs, expectations, and abilities. Research has shown that there are two types of users of financial software products: Organizers and Transactors. Organizers specifically intend to use their financial software products to organize, categorize, and track their finances with precision and detailed accuracy. For these types of users, conventional software products that provide the ability to categorize transactions, produce complex reports of income and expenses, and the like are seen as useful tools.
In sharp contrast, Transactors mainly want to pay bills and avoid overdrafts of their accounts. Transactors are typically not interested in categorizing transactions, tracking all income and expenses, or obtaining complex reports and summaries. To date, conventional software products have been designed almost exclusively with Organizers as the intended users, and as such do not provide the types of information Transactors desire most. Specifically, because Transactors are concerned with avoiding overdrafts, existing products and systems that do not provide an integrated view of both cleared transactions from the bank and uncleared transactions in the user's account, along with a current balance, do not meet the Transactor's need for an easy-to-use financial software product.
In summary, existing software products and systems do not provide for an integration of all of the relevant information about a user's account--the checkbook of uncleared transactions, cleared transactions, pending bill payments, fund transfers, and other transactions--in a single user interface display. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide on an online banking software product and system that tightly integrates bill payment, account management, and determination of current balances, into a single user interface display.